Sibylle Scheipers

Auxiliaries at War in the Middle East

If the West wants to contain or rout the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, it will have to rely on local allies in some way. The history of modern war suggests three ways in which such cooperation has previously been problematic.

Counterinsurgency or irregular warfare? Historiography and the study of ‘small wars’

This article argues that the history of irregular warfare provides a valuable analytical and critical perspective for the study of counterinsurgency campaigns and counterinsurgency doctrine. A focus on the history of irregular warfare highlights the close relationship between warfare in Europe and in the colonies. Moreover, it enables us to identify more exactly the intersection of multiple factors that lead to an escalation of violence in small wars. Finally, it also sheds light on the lack of strategic reflection on the use of irregular auxiliaries that is characteristic for many counterinsurgency campaigns.

The Use of Camps in Colonial Warfare

This article provides a comparative historical overview of the use of camps in colonial warfare. It investigates two phases in the evolution of camps: the first generation of camps that emerged around 1900 in Cuba, the Philippines, South Africa and German Southwest Africa and post-Second World War camps in the wars of decolonisation in Malaya, Kenya and Algeria. It posits that the history of camps in colonial warfare is characterised by an evolution from camps as institutions aimed at the punishment of those who supported an insurgency or rebellion towards a function that focused on the ‘rehabilitation’ of the inmates, even though this often involved torture. However, the article also outlines differences between camps in the comparative perspective and argues that the political circumstances of conflicts in the colonies, most importantly the existence of settlers and the potential for economic exploitation, played a role regarding the concrete functions and roles of camps.

Forum: Europe, Guantanamo and the ‘War on Terror’: An Exchange

In the February–March 2009 issue of Survival (‘Closing Guantanamo: Is Europe Ready?’, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 5–12) Sibylle Scheipers discussed the role of US President Barack Obamas moves to reform the detention system as a step towards renewing close transatlantic ties and facilitating transatlantic cooperation. But she also argued that it poses a difficult challenge to Europeans. Survival invited comments from three distinguished experts, and Scheipers to respond.

Irregular Auxiliaries after 1945

ABSTRACT Collaboration with native auxiliaries in wars in the peripheries of the international system is an age-old practice, the relevance of which is likely to increase in the twenty-first century. Yet, the parameters of such collaboration are understudied. This article aims to contribute to the nascent yet fragmentary scholarship on the use of native auxiliaries. It identifies three intellectual templates of the collaboration between Western regular forces and native auxiliaries: the eighteenth-century model of auxiliary ‘partisans’ as tactical complements to regular armed forces; the nineteenth-century transformation of the ‘partisan’ into the irregular guerrilla fighter and the concomitant rise of the ‘martial races’ discourse; and, finally, the post-1945 model of the loyalist auxiliary as a symbol of the political legitimacy of the counter-insurgent side in wars of decolonisation and post-colonial insurgencies. The article focuses on the rise of loyalism after 1945 in particular, a phenomenon that it seeks to understand within the broader context of irregular warfare and the moral reappraisal of irregular fighters after the Second World War.

‘Unlawful Combatants’: The West's Treatment of Irregular Fighters in the ‘War on Terror’

Abstract The Wests treatment of irregular fighters in the “war on terror” was highly problematic. This article contends that we must look beyond the assumption that political and strategic considerations compromised the law and led to the “invention” of the category of the “unlawful combatant.” Rather, the law of armed conflict itself includes strong exclusionary mechanisms towards irregular fighters. These exclusionary strands in the law came to dominate the Wests strategic decision-making on the treatment of irregular fighters. Moreover, the fact that irregular fighters became such a vital issue post-9/11 was not a result of the war on terror being a new kind of war, as has often been argued. Rather, this article suggests that it reflects an identity crisis of the Wests regular armed forces at the start of the twenty-first century.

Discrimination in Aerial Bombing: An Enduring Norm in the 20th Century?

The role airpower can and should play in current and future armed conflicts is contested. The 1990s saw overwhelming optimism about the ability of airpower to win wars by itself and to facilitate cleaner and faster military victories. Recent assessments have been more cautious and critical, in particular with respect to the effects of civilian suffering caused by the kinetic use of airpower on public opinion and on the strategic outcome of conflicts. The influential US counterinsurgency manual FM3-24, for instance, highlights the importance of avoiding civilian casualties for winning over the local population, whereas others point out that concern over civilian casualties has become one of the major limits to the use of force by Western states. There appears to be an assumption among both academics and practitioners that historical developments in the 20th century have led to an invigoration of the norm of discrimination in aerial bombing, at least in Western states. This norm affects both strategic behaviour and public discourses in that it constrains the use of airpower in armed conflict and leads to public outrages in cases of violation of the norm. Four factors have been seen to be responsible for this development: technological advances, including the emergence of mass communication media and new weapon systems; the historical experience of the potentially unlimited destructiveness of airpower in World War II; the increasing ‘legalisation’ of the use of armed force and, finally, the growing